The present invention relates to a silicone-containing fabric treatment agent or, more particularly, to a silicone-containing fabric treatment agent capable of imparting pleasantly soft touch and hydrophilicity and water-absorptivity with launderability and durability to a fabric material treated therewith.
Needless to say, fabric materials made of various kinds of synthetic fibers are used for clothing while the most serious defect of synthetic fiber-made clothes in general is the hydrophobicity or poor hydrophilicity of the synthetic fiber so that, when the clothes are underwears in direct contact with the wearer's skin, in particular, the wearer sometimes feels heavy stuffiness in a hot or humid weather or after sporting with perspiration due to the incapability of the clothes to absorb perspiration.
Various attempts and proposals have been hitherto made to solve this problem. For example, a free radical-polymerizable monomer having a hydrophilic group in the molecule is graft-polymerized on to the surface of a hydrophobic synthetic fiber by the irradiation with ultraviolet light or an ionizing radiation or in the presence of a free radical polymerization initiator. Alternatively, hydrophobic synthetic fibers are treated with a hydrophilic fabric treatment agent such as a quaternary ammonium salt, polyether compound or a silicone-modified compound thereof and the like to render the surface of the fibers hydrophilic or to render the fiber water-absorptive (see, for example, Japanese Patent Kokai 52-96297 and 58-54079). The former method of the graft-polymerization, however, is economically disadvantageous because of the complicacy of the working process which requires special apparatuses. The latter method of using a hydrophilic treatment agent, on the other hand, has a problem in the durability of the hydrophilic nature of the fabric material after treatment with the treatment agent because all of the hydrophilic fabric treatment agents are so highly hydrophilic or water-soluble that the compound on the fiber surfaces is readily dissolved away when the treated fabric material is washed or laundered to be left scarcely on the fiber surface. Therefore, the hydrophilic effect of the treatment is limited only before the first laun-dering of the treated fabric material as a fatal defect of the method so that it has been eagerly desired in the fabric industry to develop a fabric treatment agent capable of imparting durable hydrophilicity to the fabric materials treated therewith.